


Compositional Relationships

by Morcai



Category: Subarashiki Kono Sekai | The World Ends With You
Genre: Composer!Rhyme, Conductor!Neku, Gen, Someone prompted me on tumblr, and so I wrote it, character sketch, don't ask me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:53:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morcai/pseuds/Morcai
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>She thought it’d be harder, taking over a whole city, controlling it like this—Shibuya is hardly small and is definitely impatient and unforgiving.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Compositional Relationships

She thought it’d be harder, taking over a whole city, controlling it like this—Shibuya is hardly small and is definitely impatient and unforgiving.

But somehow it’s easy. Unnervingly so, but Shibuya still stands and Hanekoma isn’t complaining.

Part of that might be the way she picked a particularly powerful Conductor to aid her. Perhaps it’s the way she and Joshua choreographed the exchange of power. Maybe it’s just that she’s her, and the insights into music that she had when she was Noise transfer into her control of Music.

Or maybe it’s simpler, and all Composers are simply misdirection. After all, Rhyme only writes the structure of Shibuya’s music. She decides if the music will be jazz, or pop, or rock, if the tempo this time is allegro or adagio or prestissimo, if it should play in forte or piano or mezzo-forte. That’s easy, though.

So’s resurrecting Players, or coding them into the Game, once she’s done it a few times. It’s simple enough transposition, almost mindlessly relaxing once she gets the hang of it.

It’s really Neku who has the hard job. He takes her compositions, reads through them, clarifies what she means, reads them over again, quickly. Then he breathes in, and Shibuya breathes in with him. When he exhales Shibuya settles into the music she Composed and the city flows into new patterns.

But while she is free between Compositions Neku takes art and music classes and still finds time to whisper to the city—

_…just a little softer—_

_Faster, faster, this is allegrissimo, not…_

_ease off the brass, it’s drowning the woodwinds_

_there, hold it, steady!_

_come on, strings, this is where you carry it!_

He dictates the length of her fermatas, those moments when the city’s brands move as one.

It’s clear enough, to her, that what she does is the easy, technical work, although Neku assures her that what she does is vital, and she’s seen his attempts to compose, and he’d be an outright disaster if he ever had to Compose properly. That helps. But she knows that all she does is write Shibuya’s Music.

It is Neku who provides the Soul.

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes I can be found on [tumblr](eidolon-nebula.tumblr.com)


End file.
